Need a laugh? Via Twitter: The most popular Damn You Autocorrects this past May. I often go to that site when I’m so pissed off I might break something, because without fail, I will hurt myself laughing. Free therapy FTW!
Here’s some research sent to me by reader Kim, via Media Post. First: eReaders Found Lying in Bed:
According to the Nielsen recent survey of nearly 12,000 mobile connected device owners, 70% of tablet owners and 68% of smartphone owners said they use their devices while watching television, compared to only 35% of eReader owners.
Further, when asked where they use the devices, 61% of eReader owners use their device in bed, compared to 57% of tablet owners and 51% of smartphone owners.
I find this interesting, especially since Kobo’s last presentation that I saw at Tools of Change in February stated that their research, based on user habits of their reading apps, indicated that people don’t read in bed so much as they do read on their morning commutes. (I wish I had a link to the Kobo research and I don’t. I’m sorry). Maybe the correct answer is that readers do things all different ways, all the time, which is why we are awesome and frustrating from a market research perspective.
When examining what else people are doing while they use their devices, the results were also interesting:
Tablet owners said 30% of their time spent with their device was while watching TV compared to 21% lying in bed. Smartphone owners say that 20% of the time they are using their smartphones is while watching TV, compared to 11% lying in bed.
However, while eReader owners indicated only 15% of their eReader time was spent watching TV, but they spent a whopping 37% of that device usage time in bed.
I am totally one of those people who has an internet-connected device with me while I watch TV. If I’m not searching for and saving a recipe, I’m looking up who that guy was that killed that girl on that show I saw .02 seconds of. Hubby uses his laptop while watching TV to keep track of the baseball games he’s not watching.
But wait, there’s more!
Today’s Media Research Brief examines who buys ebooks: Book Worms Consuming More. The results are SO NOT SHOCKING:
Today’s e-book power buyer, someone who buys an e-book at least once a week, is a 44-year-old woman who loves romance and is spending more on buying books now than in the past. She uses a dedicated e-reader like a Kindle instead of reading on her computer.
I’m not 44 but that sounds a lot like me. Drawing from BISG research that I’ve heard before at ToC and DBW, the report also repeats the data such as:
- E-books currently make up around 11% of the total book market. The percentage of print book consumers who say they download e-books more than doubled between October 2010 and January 2011, from 5% to almost 13%.
- Women make up 66% of e-book power buyers. In 2009, they didn’t even make up half of e-book customers (they were at 49% of the e-book market)
- Most e-books sold (58%) are fiction, with literary fiction, science fiction, and romance each comprising over 20% of all e-book purchases
- “Power buyers” represent about 18% of the total people buying e-books today, but they buy 61% of all e-books purchased
- The most influential factors leading to an e-book purchase are free samples and low prices.
Again, not shocking. I’m more curious if there are more e-readers in bed than I thought.
Mazel tov to Quest, Kendal, and the Harlequin team for the arrival of baby Harlequin, an endangered Peregrine falcon. Harlequin was born Sunday night, and the pictures online are adorable.
There’s a live cam shot of the nesting box at the Harlequin blog, and I have my fingers crossed, and toes and talons too (Yes, of course I have talons. You suspected otherwise?) for the happy family.
Expect falcon romances, y’all. Which would be awesome!
And finally, this total douchenugget said something shitty about female authors, but then the Guardian did something funny that’s totally worth experiencing, especially because it proves the asshat douchecanoe wrong. Via Laura Vivanco comes this fun activity.
In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society this week,
during which VS Naipaul provoked fury by suggesting that women
writers are ‘sentimental’ and ‘unequal to me’, he also claimed
that ‘I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I
know whether it is by a woman or not.’
Says Vivanco, “So the Guardian has made up a quiz that allows you to guess the gender of the writer based on the excerpt.
I was very gratified that I did extremely badly. I was also amused when it was revealed that one of the excerpts comes from Laura Abbot’s A Forever Mother. It’s a current online read at eHarlequin.”
AWESOME.
So…. how’d you do on the quiz?
I’m definitely an E-Book Power Buyer, averaging 10 per week (yes averaging) and I’m kind of creeped out that they nailed my age range and book preferences.
I don’t like being a statistic dammit!
For extra amusement, Abbot’s short story begins with some lines which, in this context, could be used as a response to Naipaul (just replace the heroine’s name with that of your favourite female author):
I also thought that the commute number was really low, but they’d have to exclude car commuters and select for train/transit users only, which is not a clean comparison. But from looking around the subway car every day, it seems that at a majority is playing with some sort of screen device; it’s just not obvious who’s using a reader or reader program (personally, mine is a Sony, and I am a Power Buyer).
– -kim
I haz a Kindle. It spends a lot of time in the bedsheets. I’m one of those scofflaws who reads before she goes to sleep. Luckily, my husband finds this comical.
I’ve bought about a book a week since I got it.
I only got two right and I’m particularly gratified that I got #1 wrong
Captcha: points42
42 points go to whoever came up with this quiz!
also re autocorrect: tears are streaming down my face! LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!
almost45: I almost laughed for 45 minutes
I got 7 out of 10.
I have a Kindle and an iPad. I use the iPad while I’m watching TV or eating, and the Kindle while I’m in bed.
I don’t read on my commute, since it distracts me from the tractor trailers on the highway as I drive to work. 🙂
I got 3 out of 10 on the quiz. Felt like I was blind guessing on every one of them.
OMG thank you for that link. I laughed so hard I nearly fell off my chair 😀
I got 5/10 right and am (apparently) a sloppy thinker who clearly needs to read more male authors!
I use my e-reader in bed because I’m very short-sighted and as I lie on my side to read I have to take my glasses off. My e- reader is light and I can hold it close to my face or just make the type a little bigger and it’s just easier than holding a paper book especially a hardback.
If there were no geographical restrictions I would be a power reader, I prefer to buy e-books but can’t get the one I want so have tons of print books instead. Mainly female authors in romance, science fiction and fantasy genres 🙂
6/10
The first quote was written in such a self-important voice that I was not surprised to find out it was a Naipaul book.
I own two Sony eReaders, my original which is now used by my 80 year old father and one of the touch screen eReaders. I do some reading in bed, but only if I wake up before the alarm goes off. I tend to read when out and about (doctor’s visits, waiting in lines or for service) or when the television is not on. I am on my computer 70% of the time when the television is, tweeting about the shows currently on or what I last read.
I think I buy less now, but that is due to finances, not due to the change from physical books to digital. But considering that digital bookstores provide free books and you rarely got that with physical books, in the long run I probably have acquired more ebooks than I ever did physical books during the same time period.
5/10
I have a Sony Ereader and read it most on break/lunch at work, at the doctors office, at home (while not watching tv) and in bed.
I would love to read while commuting but DFW doesn’t run to commuter trains or busses between counties yet. Reading would distract me from avoidance of the SUVs determined to run my little car off the road.
Reaction86: Naipaul’s reaction is 86 kinds of wrong
6/10! Naipaul is full of bullshit.
4/10. Hah!
And Kindle in bed, all the time.
Except the first week I had it. Laying on my back, holding it over my face… I fell asleep. BAM! Kindle falling on nose hurts more than paperback falling on nose.
I have become a statistical power-buyer of eBooks, but only because I ‘buy’ about 10-15 free Kindle books a week. I have actually paid for only about 3 eBooks ever; I just watch the Kindle free’s like a hawk (at least once a day check the top 100 free) and click click click. So what does that do to the stats? To me, free Kindle books are like a library.
5/10
I read on my commute as well as in bed. And on the couch, at the table, at my desk, in the kitchen… You get the picture. Where I am, the Kindle is also.
8/10, but I recognized some of those excerpts, so perhaps it wasn’t a true test.
A nice alternative to Damn You, Autocorrect! is Dear Blank, Please Blank (askimet doesn’t like my link, but it’s easy enough to google).
NookC. and I go everywhere together. I don’t tend to read while watching tv—unless we count reading interesting blogs and other online stuff, like right now, as I am enjoying SBTB, typing this on NC, and watching I Love You Beth Cooper on the HBO.
I only got 50% on the quiz—still less lame than the extreme lameness of VSN.
6/10 from lame-ass, no man-writer reading, sloppy-thinker, here. But I heart the quote from the Mary Wesley book. ::adds to list of books which must be possessed::
6/10. In the middle, like my Asperger test results.
iPad, La-z-boy, television on, every evening. iPod Touch during lunch at work. I’m thinking of getting a Kindle with Special Offers to replace the Touch.
Time to buy a smartphone and start texting so I can autocorrect myself silly.
3/10. And I swore the first one was written by a woman. Take that, asshat Naipaul.
SB Sarah, thank you so much for the auto correct link. I did hurt myself and it was worth every moment.
DYAC is my new crack! Thanks for the link.
8/10.
I don’t read male authors, ever, because they never get female characters right, and usually can’t convey emotions very well (like it’s a language they don’t understand).
And I nearly fit completely into the MediaPost statistic! Dunno if I should be depressed now…. 🙂
Anony Miss:
Ouch! Yes! Happened to me, too – now I make sure I only read while lying belly-down.
I finally got to look at DYAC, and I just laughed until tears ran down my face. LMAOPRomotionalkittenbasket. 😀
I tried the test and scored 4/10.
“One of my first projects would be associated with the concept of romantic fiction—and whether it is a classification that is based upon the writing—or the sex; I have long wanted to place a D.H. Lawrence novel between the covers of Harlequin/Mills and Boon, and to test its status when seen in this light.”
—Dale Spender, The Writing or the Sex? or why you don’t have to read women’s writing to know it’s no good, (c) 1989, p. 79.
Epic fail… 3 out of 10. I’m just going to blame the low score on multi tasking (screaming at kids, helping with homework, painting my nails and taking test at the same time)!
Color me an ebook power reader, although I probably spend more time reading in the tub.
Calgon and Nook take me away!
interesting studies! Majority of the time I do use my e-reader I am lying down… Hm, I guess Kobo better do some research again?
I think I got the lowest score yet—only 2 out of 10! And those two were, ironically, Naipaul’s and the Harlequin online read…
6/10
I totally guessed that the excerpt from Nicholas Sparks was written by a female.
Nook in Bed…
The Nook Color (backlit) helped me IMMENSELY when we were co-sleeping w/ baby because I could read w/o turning on lamps or overhead light. (After falling asleep a few too many times with my headlamp, I was tired of that too.)
Huh I got 9/10 and I’m pretty sure I haven’t read any of those, weird… Not to sure what that says about me!
If we’re talking e-devices, bed and stats, here’s one. . . I learned today that 6 to 10% of people who text admit to texting while having sex.
The survey did not reveal A) Who they were texting or B) What was said.
I can’t help but wonder if anyone texting at that time typed OMG! OMG! OM..AHHHH.
I got 7 of 10.
Hm…I normally read in bed. I drive to work (with a really short commute!) so reading in transit is out for me.
6/10
5/10
And when I have a functional ereader (mine is dead now! wah!) I use it when traveling but mostly when I am in bed. I love how I can read in the dark if my husband is asleep and that it shuts itself off if I fall asleep 🙂
Two out of ten, woo-hoo!
dammit – I totally thought I’d rock that quiz! 3 out of 10. Turns out I’m a girl or something…
Also, both reading and writing smack dab in the demographic. Alas.
Through 47? in a few years…
I got a 3 out of 10… the quote following the score cracked me up “What are you, a girl or something?” ha ha ha.
I got the douchecanoe’s (Naipaul) book right as written by a male, but in my defense I read the passage and thought, “kind of crap and sounds a lot like Naipaul’s statements about women writers – he totally could have written this.”
On a slightly related note, I once had a customer ask me for help finding any good mysteries I could recommend – but insisted I not recommend those written by female authors. He also insisted I take no offense. Oh to have been a fellow customer rather than employee, I would’ve told him exactly how much offense I’d taken. ::muters under breath:: I’m a female author you jackass.
I got 7/10 on the quiz.
But how cool to learn that I’m a power buyer! I’ve never been a power anything. I read on a Kindle *and* my laptop, though (not at the same time). We only got the Kindle in the UK last year so I had lots of books in other formats, and while I am focusing on the Kindle now for new things, I still have ePubs to read.
Thank goodness I read that autocorrect link at home and not in the office, is all I can say 😉